A few years ago, we had a “most beautiful chicken coop” contest. The winner? A cordwood chicken coop.

Cordwood construction is sometimes also called “stackwood construction.” A cordwood building consists of short, round pieces of wood (think firewood) held together with mortar.

While the look of cordwood construction can take some getting used to, personally, I find it very appealing. These buildings are especially attractive when multicolored glass is incorporated into the structure by placing glass bottles in the walls.

But there are plenty of other reasons to consider cordwood for all types of building projects, large and small. The method of construction is reasonably simple, and the materials are readily available — two good reasons cordwood has been popular with DIY builders for many years. And there are ecological reasons to consider cordwood construction, too. You can probably get the wood locally, so it doesn’t need to be shipped long distances, and the thick wooden walls of a cordwood building provide great insulation.

Here’s a fun video tour of a cordwood cabin. Take a look, and also check out the additional resources below.

Cordwood Articles from the Mother Earth News Archive:

• The Charm of Cordwood Construction

• The Return of the Cordwood House

• A Century (or More) of Stackwood Homes

• The Cordwood Sauna

• A Child-built Cordwood Clubhouse

Other Cordwood Resources:

• Cordwoodmasonry.com is the online home of Rob and Jaki Roy and the Earthwood Building School.

• There’s a whole cordwood chapter from the digital book Building Green on the Nauhaus Idea Repository.

• Greenhomebuilding.com has a nice cordwood page.

• The All Things Cordwood section at Daycreek.com, includes a great photo album.

White roofs, aka cool roofs, have caught attention lately as an offbeat but relatively simple and effective strategy for reducing air conditioning costs and greenhouse gas emissions.

The idea is simple: white reflects heat instead of absorbing it. It's also a favorite idea of Energy Secretary Steven Chu, who said "when you're thinking of putting on a new roof, make it white" in his appearance last month on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (you can watch the video below).  Chu added that white roofs costs about the same as traditional black roofs and for those in a warm climate, a white roof can reduce air conditioning costs up to about 20 percent.

When Chu talks white roofs, he cites research from Art Rosenfeld, the commissioner of the California Energy Commission. Rosenfeld calculated that pervasive white roofs and white streets throughout the United States would create a significant reduction in carbon dioxide emissions — the equivalent to getting rid of all cars for 11 years. You can learn more about Rosenfeld and his passion for energy efficiency by watching the second video below.

The New York Times also covered cool roofs in White Roofs Catch On as Energy Cost Cutters.

"We come home on days when it’s over 100 degrees outside, and the house is at 80 degrees,” white roof owner Jon Waldrep of Sacremento, Calif., told The New York Times.  

According to research by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, nearly every state could see significant reductions in carbon dioxide emissions if 80 percent of commerical buildings were converted to have white roofs, even if white roofs meant increased heating demands in winter. You can see how much each state would save in Imagining a Cool-Roof Nation.

So what do you think? Should commercial buildings switch to white roofs? What about for your home? If it meant significant savings in your air conditioning bills, would you choose a white (or lightly colored) roof the next time you need new shingles? Or would that be too much of a color clash? Share your thoughts by posting a comment below.

“When I gave up cigarettes, my dad called me a quitter.” — an old McCornack joke

We have officially withdrawn MAX from the Progressive Insurance Automotive X Prize competition. It was a no-hard-feelings decision by both parties.

Have no fear, this doesn't mean the end of MAX. It doesn't even mean an end to our involvement with the Auto X Prize competition. I intend to be there for their race events and cover them as a journalist. And I expect MAX will be the most fuel-efficient vehicle in the press corps.

But from a competition standpoint, it is clear that we and the X Prize Foundation are marching to the sounds of different drummers, so it’s time we take our hat out of the ring.

For the first year or so, the X Prize Foundation thought MAX was pretty neat. They didn't have many applicants yet, and we were one of the few with an actual car on the road. The MAX Project and the Auto X Prize were good for each other in the early days.

But lately, this competition has been interfering with our goal for MAX: a high-mileage car you can build on a budget. The final rules have no place for a DIY car, and preparing MAX (even on paper) for factory production — as in 10,000 cars a year — has been sucking up our resources like you wouldn't believe. In the last year I have literally spent more hours filling out X Prize Foundation paperwork than I've spent developing MAX, and MAX has suffered for it. Instead of working on streamlining to improve the car’s gas mileage, I've been writing business plans and tech documents and getting price quotes, for every single part in the car. Imagine trying to figure out the cost of 20,000 windshield wiper blades to be delivered in five years, etc., etc., etc.

So go ahead and ask: Why didn't we figure this out two years ago? Why didn't we realize we'd get drowned in paperwork before we ever sent in our entry fee? Why didn't we predict that 10,000 how-to e-books to 10,000 potential DIYers wasn't going to count as “manufacturing capability”? It's simple — we entered the competition before the X Prize Foundation wrote the rules.

Mind you, I have no bone to pick with the Auto X Prize folks about the rules. It's their $10 million dollars and they can write the rules any way they like. They've always been perfectly up front that anybody who didn't like the final rules could get their entry fee back. Rule development is a tough job —I can see why it took years to complete them.

But now that the rules are done, they left us with a simple choice: Is MAX going to be a $10,000 DIY car you can build this decade? Or a $40,000 factory-built car you can buy in 2014?

Well, we chose to stick to our DIY roots. The Auto X Prize is a fascinating competition, and I'll enjoy covering it for you ... from behind the wheel of MAX, a high-mileage car that I built with my own two hands.

Photo by Katherine Loeck

Browse previous MAX Updates.

Read the introductory MAX article, Here Comes the 100-mpg Car.

Visit the Kinetic Vehicles website for more technical details on MAX.

Do you ride a bike to work a few days a week? Good for you. Guess what — you deserve more than a pat on the back! How does $20 a month sound?

If you use a bicycle for your work commute at least three days a week and if your employer participates in the program, you are eligible for an expense reimbursement of up to $20 per month. The credit is intended to help offset some of the costs of bicycle commuting, such as the purchase of a bike, bike lock, helmet, parking pass, maintenance and even shower facilities. Employers can choose to reimburse receipts, or offer monthly payments or vouchers.

So how do you get the credit? Ask your human resources department if your employer is set up to provide this benefit. If not, tell your employer you want it! Find other bicycle commuters in your workplace, and encourage them to ask for it, too.

Learn more through the League of American Bicyclists and the office of Congressman Earl Blumenauer.

Note: Though cyclists applaud this legislation — and have been working on the policy for ages — many folks criticized this year's $700 billion financial bailout plan to which it was attached. You can read more about that in Bicycle Commuter Tax Break is Bittersweet Victory for Measure's Sponsor.

If you’re interested in learning about wind power, there are a lot of resources available online, and I especially like checking out wind resource maps. There’s no faster way to get a quick look at wind power potential in your part of the world.

Two Fast Links to Wind Resource Maps

• Check out the wind power available on each continent with this collection of global wind power maps, which were produced by a study at Stanford.

• Take a look at U.S. wind power with these state wind resource maps from the U.S. Department of Energy.

Learning More with the Maps

All of these maps break wind resources down into wind power classes. For a quick look at how that translates into actual wind speeds, check out this helpful wind power classes chart from AWEA, the American Wind Energy Association.

A few other things that are helpful to keep in mind when thinking about wind power:

• Wind resource maps are just general guides. Different site-specific features (hills, trees, buildings, etc.) can make a significant difference in whether your property is a good location for wind power. (You can learn more about that with this small wind guide.)
  

• When you’re looking for the mightiest winds, remember that wind resources generally get better as you get higher off the ground. (Notice that the wind speeds on the maps and charts above are always listed for specific heights.)
  

• On this resource page from AWEA it specifies that in general, a wind power class of 4 or higher is currently preferred for large scale wind plants.
  

• A minimum wind speed may be required for grid-connected home wind turbines. This AWEA resource page also explains that average wind speeds of 5 meters per second (11 miles per hour) and above are generally required for grid-connected applications. Assuming a height of 10 meters, that's toward the upper end of Class 2 wind speeds.

Happy wind surfing!

In the recording, manufacturing and shipping of their new album, "Great Possessions," The Giving Tree Band once again displayed their dedication to creating guilt-free entertainment. They camped, ate locally grown organic produce, and for a total of 500 miles, they rode their bikes back and forth to a solar-powered studio. Their instruments are made from naturally fallen trees, the packaging is 100-percent recycled (and features vegetable ink), trees are being planted to offset shipping emissions, and even the music was written to encourage our well-being and that of the environment.

But all that is really beside the point. The album, to be released Aug. 18, features fantastic folk tunes that are worth a listen — you can do so at www.thegivingtreeband.com.

When I showed up on the doorstep of Kinetic Vehicles earlier this year to check out the high-mileage DIY car known as MAX (see Update No. 22), my aura somehow communicated “car enthusiast.” 

Although I took my first road trip in the back of a Corvette at 2 weeks old, my father’s passion for automobiles has not rubbed off on me. I have never waxed my rig, checked the tire pressure or paid any attention to the confusing maze of gray intestines under the hood of my car. As far as transportation goes, I prefer to focus my energy on the power and strength of the human body. 

I had read about MAX in my days as a MOTHER EARTH NEWS intern. But now, given that I live in Oregon (like Jack McCornack and the Kinetic Vehicles team), I had the chance to actually see this unique creation in action. What I didn’t expect was that this encounter would bring about a long overdue engagement of mind, body and machine: learning to drive a manual transmission. 

At first, MAX made me think of a big kid version of a bumper car that had escaped from the state fair. But this image vanished when my Pontiac Sunfire convertible couldn’t keep up with MAX on the drive back to the shop. I can attest that MAX is definitely a real car … except with more personality than any car I’ve ever known. 

When I jumped into the driver’s seat, it wasn’t the five-point safety harness that made me nervous, it was the stick shift. MAX is dear to Jack, the Kinetic Vehicles team and the editors at MOTHER EARTH NEWS, so the last thing I wanted to do was ruin the transmission or clutch.

In the passenger seat, Jack began the lesson. MAX is probably the best manual transmission to learn on because it won’t die if the driver messes up while coaxing it into first gear. Regardless, as soon as the clutch would start to engage, my feet would freeze until MAX putted along. 

After multiple stop and go circles around the parking lot, and multiple commands from Jack to stop, I finally learned to give MAX some gas when I felt the clutch turning over. What a pivotal step in the learning process! I was ready for second gear. After a couple up and down shifts, I felt fairly confident in my stick shift driving abilities. Not that I’m road ready, but if I needed to drive someone to the emergency room and the only available car had a manual transmission, I could pull it off.

Learning to drive MAX was more than learning to drive a fun car. Seeing firsthand the time, skill, science and enthusiasm behind MAX made the experience unique and meaningful. This machine was built from scratch to prove a point about the possibilities of green transportation. The necessary technology is already available. The innovation is what we need. Thank you, MAX.

You can see lots of photos from my trip in the MAX, the High-mileage DIY Car gallery.

Photo by Jack McCornack

Browse previous MAX Updates.

Read the introductory MAX article, Here Comes the 100-mpg Car.

Visit the Kinetic Vehicles website for more technical details on MAX.

Riding a bicycle is a great form of green transportation. Getting around on a bike doesn’t consume any fossil fuels, and it’s great exercise, too. A bicycle is also a relatively inexpensive purchase — at least compared to a car or motorcycle. (Check out our tips for finding a great new or used bike.)

We’d like to hear more about your biking habits. How often do you ride a bike? Do you ride more for transportation or for recreation? Is your community bike-friendly, or is it hard to get around safely? Share your thoughts and any tips for less experienced bikers by posting a comment below.